expressing life's narratives creatively

Day 3 – ARTfest

No one wanted to go home………….. although we all accepted that all good things must EVENTUALLY come to an end…….. it was difficult to bear. Jenene has a long drive home & her starting to pack up & refusing a glass of wine because she was ‘driving’ signalled to us all the end was in sight. Distressed as I was about this she departed without me getting a chance to scan or photograph more of her work………she made a gorgeous page in her dictionary (which is quite small in scale – about 6" x 4") on Architecture in Prussian Blue & Soft White & she commenced another one using the word cup with paper from Dianne’s Daughter’s & a delicate graphic of an English tea cup in tones of rose, peach & crystalline. Abby’s book is about the size of a hard back novel. She worked on various pages, & as the book is a Thesaurus, it gave her some interesting scope for interpretation of images she found to use. Her dance page is pictured above. Lynne is new to collage & feels WAY out of her depth in this medium, but is coming up with some amazing results & is finding talents she didn’t know she had! This is an excerp (the book is too big for the scanner) of her page ‘window to the soul’ she also did some great work on a page she titled ‘Eat your Greens’ which included the same graphic pieces that I used for my lettuce page. I had a head start on the others because I prepared some painted backgrounds ahead of time & had already sorted some images (as usual, working out what you are going to do takes longer than actually doing it!) My dictionary is about 5" x 7" so the page size is big enough to fit a good ‘story’ on, but not too big to be intimidating. Below are a couple of my pages.I will post some more tomorrow after I have had a ‘scanathon’ & have scanned & cropped them.

Thanks ladies for a sensational weekend…….you’re the best……..I feel SO inspired I can’t sleep!!!

more below if you’d like to keep reading………

All of the artists at our ARTfest weekend work hard at making our art ‘pleasing to the eye’ & this altered book project has been adopted as a bit of a ‘suck it & see’ style of work, a little less serious, if we didn’t like how a page was looking or turning out, we gave ourselves permission to either just paint or paste over it…….or ultimately, to ‘rip,rip,rip’……(rip it out altogether) Some of my pages are not really my favourite pieces of work, but as I always say, how do you know that the work you are creating is not going to turn into a Mona Lisa……..you have to go through the experience. The biggest limitation that we all found was the quality & ‘durability’ of the paper in each of our particular books. I have found that mine won’t stand up to much wetting (ie using watercolours or wet glue) or much rubbing (masking fluid or erasing pencil lines) I have worked out that the best colouring medium for this particular book is acrylic paint. It gives the pages some body & it is not too watery. Abby’s was so thin that she almost disintergrated her page by painting it, so she found sticking 2 pages together with spray adhesive before she started working on a page gave it the body it needed. Jenene’s was about the same as mine, where as Lynne’s book seemed fine to paint & work in, without any particular regard. I am purposely doing alot of handwriting in this project, ‘cos I don’t usually, & I don’t really like my hand writing that much, as I is a bit all over the show…………BUT I am BY CHOICE………..extending myself & making myself feel uncomfortable about the process in order to grow.

thanks for visiting …….

hi there, greetings from my creative space to yours....... having been creative my whole life. My creative pursuits include cooking, painting, art with a needle and photography...........these often come together in some form of artistic narrative. This takes the form of 2d paper (ATC's, postcards, etc) handmade books, journals, canvases & occasionally an assemblage. I dabble in digital creation using my photos to create a whole new picture - but that is mostly to make up for my inadequate drawing skills. Professionally, as an interior designer - at least part of my week is spent creating homes and spaces for people to express their life in. Like Chargall 'I work in whatever medium likes me at the moment' and move comfortably between my mixed media studio table, the kitchen, my patchwork/quilting/embroidery basket, or the computer.
Thoughts and images here range from art and creativity, techniques, photography, show and tell to family and baby news and travel.. I am keen to share with you BOTH my art successes and failures because I am not putting myself forward as anyone special -like most of us - just a work in progress, arting along the way ........ Grab yourself a cup or glass of something to relax with and have a look around.
BELOW is a list of catagories which house archives, each of my previous posts, that have been allocated to one subject or another. So that's the place to click if you'd like to look at one particular type of work.